Why go to the gym when it will come to you—in a van

Sometimes getting yourself to the gym feels like a Herculean task. Other times, the gym pulls into your driveway before you’ve even rolled out of bed. At least it might if you live on Long Island and call Inform Fitness’ Mobile Gym or GymGuyz, two businesses that put workout equipment on wheels.

Inform Fitness founder Adam Zickerman, author of Power of 10 and creator of the workout of the same name, says he was inspired to create the Mobile Gym after waiting in line for lunch at a stellar food truck in Manhattan. “I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute—I can put my gym on wheels, too,'” he says.

So he retrofitted a small bus (that looks like a party bus or car-rental shuttle) with his signature weight-lifting equipment and sent it with a trainer to make stops at different points in the Hamptons, where many of his clients were missing his workout during the summer months.

In the winter, when Hamptons business got slow, he sent it to drive around Nassau County as a moving billboard, and then businesses began to request it for employee fitness programs. “It turned into this great corporate vehicle where employees can have a safe, efficient workout in just 20 minutes,” he says, without even leaving company property (or the parking lot, to be exact).

A Gymguyz van (Photo: Gymguyz)

Gymguyz sets up shop in similar locales, but instead of having clients sweat inside the actual vehicle, the trainer and equipment arrive in a van and set up for the workout in a park, your home, or anywhere else that might work. “Once we met someone in the middle of a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot,” says founder Josh York. (Parking lots are popular in this industry.)

And Gymguyz is a national franchise with vans cruising across the country. They even operate in Manhattan and promise parking isn’t a problem. Maybe after those squats they could teach you a little something about squeezing a Zipcar into a tight spot? —Lisa Elaine Held